The Destination

“We must accept renewal as part of our daily mission, always going back in our thoughts to our original commitment to God and reaffirming it.”

I was introduced to this great book called Simple Caring. When people ask me three words to describe myself, “caring” is always on the list. I feel like I am such a caring person, most the time I feel like I care too much. But, maybe caring isn’t as “easy” as I make it out to be. But it should be. As this book states..

“Caring is a synonym for love, and without it our lives are quickly drained of purpose. Because caring is at the heart of every good relationship, thinking about how we care for others is a valuable investment of our time.”

If caring is love, and love is caring, then why are relationships so hard? Why do I always find myself failing miserably at them?

The picture you see atop this article is a candid that my sister took on a quick trip to Kansas City this weekend. A trip in which I was a “date” for her and her husband, also known as the third wheel. I sat across the table from them, and just smiled as the waitress came and removed the wine glass, silverware, and napkin set up for the 4th person at the table, and in my mind, as she looked at me and smiled, I just imagined her saying, “oh I’m sorry sweetie, you don’t have a date.” And then I laugh because I think of the movie Bridesmaids, when the girl is talking away, and says, “this is my husband, you don’t have a husband.” Or, in Never Been Kissed when the carnival man starts yelling, “lonely rider, lonely rider, need someone to ride with this woman..” Because, regardless of how cool and composed you try to be, and regardless of how good of a date the other couple is, you still have to rearrange your thoughts when they start going there, and you start thinking that life sucks again.

“Enjoy the ride and be surprised by the destination when you get there.”

How perfect is that quote? In life we are taught so much to set goals and achieve them. And then set more goals, and achieve them. And while I’m all about goals and success, sometimes I think we get our minds so geared towards reaching them that we forget to actually enjoy the traffic jams, and construction, and “make a legal u-turn” moments, when they go completely wrong. Instead, we just pull the car over and and there we are crying in the middle of the intersection because we haven’t made it to that one spot we were supposed to be.

We’ve got to start focusing on the journey more than the destination.

I live for the day that I’m sitting in a traffic jam, and I look over and smile at my husband. That day that I’m yelling at him because we’re lost and he was supposed to be the navigator, and I’m losing my cool because we are going to be late for dinner, with the same couple that has allowed me to be their third wheel for years. But, even in those moments, I hope we enjoy our journey as we are working towards the surprise of the destination.

From the outside it can seem that everyone else has it all together. That their lives are perfect and yours is a mess, but, you have to remind yourself that they too are struggling with different goals and different destinations.

Here comes another goal:

Goal #3 – Continually be aware of my thoughts, and stay committed to covering the bad with good, because we truly can change and overcome by that simple method. Enjoy the journey. Always enjoy the journey.

Let’s live life. Truly live. Let go of worry, let go of expectations and time frames, and just LIVE. And when it gets hard…just keep repeating those things over and over!

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